Jeffrey Dahmer, Multiple Killer, Is Bludgeoned to Death in Prison

By DON TERRY,

Published: November 29, 1994

CHICAGO, Nov. 28—
Jeffrey L. Dahmer, whose gruesome exploits of murder, necrophilia and dismemberment shocked the world in 1991, was attacked and killed today in a Wisconsin prison, where he was serving 15 consecutive life terms.

Mr. Dahmer was 34, older than any of his victims, who ranged in age from 14 to 33. He died of massive head injuries, suffered sometime between 7:50 and 8:10 A.M., when he was found in a pool of blood in a toilet area next to the prison's gym, said Michael Sullivan, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. He was pronounced dead shortly after 9 A.M.

A bloodied broomstick was found nearby, and a fellow inmate who is serving life sentence for murder, Christopher J. Scaver, 25, of Milwaukee, is the prime suspect, the authorities said.

E. Michael McCann, the Milwaukee County District Attorney, who sent Mr. Dahmer to prison in 1992, said, "This is the last sad chapter in a very sad life."

"Tragically," Mr. McCann said, "his parents will have to experience the same loss the families of his victims have experienced."

A third inmate, Jesse Anderson, himself a notorious figure in the history of Milwaukee crime and race, was critically injured in the attack.

Mr. Sullivan would not comment on a possible motive for the beatings nor would he say if it was Mr. Dahmer or Mr. Anderson who was the main target of the violence. Mr. Scarver, who is black, was convicted in 1992 of murdering Steve Lohman, who was shot in the head at the Milwaukee office of the Wisconsin Conservation Corps, where he worked, officials said. Mr. Scarver is not eligible for parole until 2042.

But both Mr. Dahmer, whose victims were mostly black, Hispanic and Asian men and boys, and Mr. Anderson, a white man who killed his wife and blamed it on two black men, had badly shaken Milwaukee's racial peace.

Mr. McCann said today, "I hope there will be no economic returns or celebration as a folk hero for the man that killed Jeffrey Dahmer."

"God forbid," he said, "but I would not be surprised if it happened."

Mr. Dahmer and the two other inmates had been assigned to clean the toilets and the showers near the gym and had arrived there under guard at 7:50 A.M.

Then the inmates were apparently left unattended for up to 20 minutes.

"They followed procedures," Mr. Sullivan said of the guards. "There was no irregular gap in supervision."

The three inmates, all convicted murderers, had been on the routine work detail together for about three weeks without incident -- until today. At 8:10 A.M., a guard returned to find Mr. Dahmer bleeding on the floor. The guard sounded the alarm and then found Mr. Anderson several rooms away in the shower area.

When Mr. Dahmer arrived at the prison, the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, about 40 miles north of Madison, his safety was a major concern.

The blond former chocolate-factory worker was the most prolific killer in the state's history, so, the authorities feared, killing him might earn a convict an honored place in the prison world, especially for someone with a long sentence and with little to lose.

Mr. Dahmer's first year in prison had been spent in protective isolation, away from the general inmate population. But in the last year, Mr. Dahmer and the prison authorities had deemed it safe enough for him to be integrated into the general population of 622 inmates.

Last July, however, an inmate tried to slash Mr. Dahmer's throat with a plastic homemade knife during a chapel service. But Mr. Dahmer was not injured and both he and his keepers determined that the attack was an isolated incident.

"He never told me he was afraid," said Stephen Eisenberg, a lawyer representing Mr. Dahmer in several civil suits filed by the families of his victims. "This shouldn't have happened. Wisconsin does not have a death penalty."

Mr. Dahmer confessed to 17 killings, 16 in Wisconsin and one, , his first, he said, in his hometown of Bath Township, Ohio, a well-to-do suburb of Akron. He pleaded guilty and was convicted of 15 killings in Wisconsin. Prosecutors said there was not enough evidence to charge Mr. Dahmer with the 16th slaying.

Mr. Dahmer also pleaded guilty to the Ohio slaying of a young hitchhiker, Steven Hicks, in his parent's home in 1978.

Mr. Dahmer met most of his victims at bus stops, bars, malls and adult bookstores in Chicago and Milwaukee. He then lured them to his apartment in a hard-pressed section of Milwaukee with promises of beer or money in exchange for posing for nude photographs.

Then he would drug their drinks, strangle and stab them while they were unconscious. He ate part of the arm of at least one man and stored the remains, including the hearts, of several others in his refrigerator.

Mr. Dahmer told investigators he killed to ward off loneliness. "I didn't want them to leave," he said.

Mr. Dahmer was almost caught in May 1991 when a 14-year-old Laotian boy, Konerak Sinthasomphone, stumbled into the street bleeding when Mr. Dahmer left the apartment for a six-pack of beer.

Two Milwaukee police officers ignored the pleas of a woman who said the boy was in trouble, and allowed Mr. Dahmer to take him back into his apartment, apparently believing Mr. Dahmer's story that he and the boy were lovers after a spat.

Mr. Dahmer later told investigators that shortly after he got the boy back into his apartment, he killed him. After the Dahmer case broke, the two officers who found the boy bleeding were dismissed, but they won reinstatement last April after a lengthy court battle. One has since left the department.

Mr. Dahmer was finally arrested after another intended victim broke free and ran into the street with a handcuff dangling from his wrist.

While Mr. Dahmer is now dead, the legal battle over his estate remains alive. Several families of his victims sued him and were awarded millions of dollars. Ever since, they have been trying to gain control of the contents of his Milwaukee apartment, where he killed most of his victims.

The families want to auction off some 312 items, including a 55-gallon vat he used to decompose the bodies; the refrigerator where he stored hearts; a saw, a hammer and his toothbrush. Tom Jacobson, the lawyer for the families, said the auction could bring more than $100,000.

Rita Isbell, the sister of one of Mr. Dahmer's last victims, Errol Lindsey, 19, said she always knew that this day would come sooner or later.

For the past two years, she said, she has been getting telephone calls from men identifying themselves as prison inmates, offering condolences and promises that Mr. Dahmer would be "taken care of." The last call came about six months ago.